"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed, but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." Oscar Wilde

Thursday, June 10, 2010

Georgia executes Melbert Ray Ford

Authorities say a Georgia man convicted of the 1986 shooting deaths of his ex-girlfriend and her 11-year-old niece has been executed.

Melbert Ray Ford (left), 49, died by lethal injection at the state prison in Jackson, the Georgia Department of Corrections said Wednesday.

Department spokeswoman Kristen Stancil says the time of death was 7:27 p.m.

The U.S. Supreme Court had early Wednesday denied a last motion by Ford's lawyer to delay the execution. The Georgia Supreme Court had previously voted unanimously to deny a similar appeal.

Prosecutors say Ford was seeking revenge when he killed Martha Chapman Matich and her niece Lisa Chapman. They say Ford began harassing her with phone calls after the couple broke up and also told friends he wanted to kill her.

Ford becomes the 1st condemned inmate to be put to death this year in Georgia and the 47th overall since the state resumed capital punishment in 1983.

Only Texas (459), Virginia (107), Oklahoma (92), Florida (69), and Missouri (67) have carried out more executions in the USA since the death penalty was re-legalized on July 2, 1976.

Ford becomes the 26th condemned inmate to be put to death this year in the USA and the 1214th overall since the nation resumed executions on January 17, 1977.

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Polunsky Unit - Welcome to Hell

Texas Death Row is a disgrace to the state of Texas. Click on the photo above to view 50 recent annotated pictures of the "living' conditions" on Texas Death Row. These photos were provided by the State of Texas in response to a Freedom of Information Act request filed by attorney Yolanda Torres. These photos were eventually posted on Thomas Whitaker's blog, "Minutes Before Six". Mr. Whitaker is currently on Death Row in the state of Texas.

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The little we can do, the very little we can do, we must do; for honor's sake, yet without illusions.Théodore Monod

Whoever destroys a soul, it is considered as if he destroyed an entire world. And whoever saves a life, it is considered as if he saved an entire world.The Talmud

Civilization and violence are antithetical concepts. Through violence you may murder a murderer, but you can't murder murder. Through violence you may murder a liar, but you can't establish truth. Through violence you may murder a hater, but you can't murder hate. Darkness cannot put out darkness, only light can do that.Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed, but by the punishments that the good have inflicted.Oscar Wilde

I am constantly amazed by man's inhumanity to man.Primo Levi

Capital punishment would be more effective as a preventive measure if it were administered prior to the crime.Woody Allen

I am not, sir, a bad person, though in all truth I am not lacking in reasons for being one. We are all born naked, and yet, as we begin to grow up, it pleases Destiny to vary us, as if we were made of wax. Then, we are all sent down various paths to the same end: death. Some men are ordered down a path lined with flowers, others are asked to advance along a road sown with thistles and prickly pears. The first gaze about serenely and in the aroma of their joyfulness they smile the smile of the innocent, while the latter writhe under the violent sun of the plain and knit their brows like varmints at bay. There is a world of difference between adorning one's flesh with rouge and eau-de-cologne and doing it with tattoos that later will never wear off.Camilo José Cela, The Family of Pascual Duarte

Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch'entrate.Dante, Inferno

An eye for an eye will make the whole world blind.Mahatma Gandhi

It would take me a long time to understand how systems inflict pain and hardship in people's lives and to learn that being kind in an unjust system is not enough.Sister Helen Prejean, Dead Man Walking

The worst in the worst is expecting the worst.Daniel Pennac

The justification for mercy has its roots not in merit, but in need. We don’t deserve mercy, we need it. I think all of us—the best and the worst—are in need of mercy, and it is only by showing mercy that, morally, we ourselves become entitled to receiving it. Bereft of mercy, our society would be impoverished and inhuman, for mercy is quintessentially a human quality, not found elsewhere in the natural world.

You can take away our names and replace them with numbers, cage and store us in conditions not even fit for your family dog, and exterminate us at your whim, but we are still human beings, capable of everything from love and beauty to violence and hate.Thomas B. Whitaker (Texas Death Row inmate #999522)

This is an execution, not surgery. Where does that come from, that you must find the method of execution that causes the least pain?Antonin Scalia, U.S. Supreme Court Justice, on why Kentucky's lethal injection protocol did not qualify as cruel and unusual and therefore was not unconstitutional.

Almost all my [Death Penalty] clients should have been taken out of their homes when they were children. They weren't. Nobody had any interest in them until, as a result of nobody's interest in them, they became menaces, at which point society did become interested, if only to kill them.David R. Dow, Texas Public Defender Service attorney